Life — January 27, 1921 — page 17: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE WATER HOLE AFTER AN EIGHT-YEARS’ THIRST. ed except as an effeminate fool, whereas the Roman Catholic priesthood was al- ways represented on the stage and else- where in a most favorable way. It thinks that is because the Catholics stand | up for their clergy’ and. the Protestants do not. It thinks the time has come for the Protestant to show somewhat more ginger. The trouble may be that the Protestant ministers do not advertise. So far as car- toons go, observation will show that steady and profitable advertisers are us- ually treated with consideration and re- spect. What limit the Methodists intend to set for the cartoons does not appear. Perhaps they will go to Congress about it since legislation seems to be their fa- vorite remedy. But what about the Beati- tudes? “Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and . . . say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake.” Do the Methodist brethren intend to deprive their clergy of that blessing? And, besides that, do they appreciate the value of ad- vertising, and do they realize that com- minatory advertisement is about as good as the other sort, and oftentimes is better? For people who do not know anything about minrsters, it is better to start with a bad opinion of them and come to get a good one than to go the other way round, but if the Methodist Board insists on de- barring actors. cartoonists and writers 133 from depicting them unfavorably, they ought to pray about it—that is their nat- | ural weapon, 'HE newspapers report that Mrs. Har- rington, of Danville, IIL, started on a hunger strike about the first of December to induce her husband to join the church. Her husband is an obdurate worldling and will not do what she wishes. We have the precedent of MacSwiney in favor of hunger striking to make obdurate people do what you want them to, but the like- ness between Mrs. Harrington and Mac- Swiney is not exact because MacSwiney was in prison and limited in his choice of coercive means, whereas Mrs. Harring- ton was foot-loose, had access to weapons and was not inhibited from any form of domestic persuasion, including prayer. OW much Professor Michelson, of Chicago, has helped us about measur- ing the remoteness and dimensions of the big star, Betelgeuse, has not yet been cal- culated by the statisticians. Dr. Michelson says Betelgeuse is two hundred and sixty million miles across, and that, with light traveling at the rate of one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles a second, the star is one hundred and fifty light years away from the earth. One would think he was talking of the national debts of the United States and Europe. He has got great credit for his measurements, but even so they are disputed. Dr. Mitchell, of the University of Virginia, is inclined to think that he has understated his dis- tances by about half, There is comfort ina way in the thought that when we get off this earth we get in- to a spacious locality, so that if anything sudden should happen to Earth, we will not necessarily be exposed to be hit by the pieces, But aside from that these figures are rather fatiguing and the stories about external conditions told in the spiritist books are much livelier and match better with our experience and capacity. E, S. Martin, comicbooks.com